{pic by sloomis08}

It’s not easy being John McCain. He belongs to a corrupt political party that glorifies greed, ignorance, and intolerance. He has masochistically lashed himself to a globally reviled president who leads the most epically disastrous administration in modern U.S. history. And he lacks any of the charm, charisma, and eloquence that his Democratic opponent in the presidential race possesses in seemingly unlimited quantities.

What can the poor man possibly do to distinguish himself favorably as a candidate for President of the United States? McCain and his posse of advisors have struggled to answer this question and have identified the one asset the candidate has in abundance: age. The man is really, really old. And that translates into “experience.” More precisely—when one factors in the years that McCain spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—it translates into “foreign policy experience.” The dude has been around the block several hundred times, so he simply must know more about the world than Barack Obama, right?

Well, not exactly. As Politico and the Washington Post have both documented in recent days, McCain seems to have a rather unsteady grasp of some very basic facts that are essential to understanding, let alone formulating, foreign policy. For instance, it is probably important that the next president understand that Iran, which is Shiite, is unlikely to fund al Qaeda, which is Sunni, because Shiite fundamentalists and Sunni fundamentalists tend to despise each other. It might also be worthwhile to keep in mind that Vladimir Putin is from Russia, not Germany, and that the Czech Republic and Slovakia are separate countries which have not been joined together as “Czechoslovakia” since 1993.

McCain’s apparent confusion over these kinds of pesky little details might cause the casual observer to question just how deep the would-be president’s expertise in foreign policy really is. Of course, it’s possible that McCain’s confusion is more the result of Alzheimer’s (à la Ronald Reagan) than inherent stupidity (à la George W. Bush). But neither of those options comes across as very persuasive in a campaign commercial.

{pic from themillersofliverpool}

Fundamentalists tend to be a humorless lot. Regardless of their orientation (Left, Right), or the precise nature of their fundamentalist distress (religious, political, social, economic), or their reasons for being fundamentalists (ideology, hero worship), they share a black-and-white view of the world that is pathological in its severity. Concepts such as “irony,” “sarcasm,” and “satire” are far too nuanced for the fundamentalist mindset to grasp. In fact, fundamentalists are sometimes so confused by these concepts that they can’t distinguish their friends from their enemies.

And so it is that some supporters of presidential aspirant Barack Obama are incensed and outraged over the cartoon which adorns the cover of the July 21st issue of The New Yorker magazine. The cartoon, which has been condemned as “tasteless and offensive” by Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton, portrays Obama in Islamic garb, bumping fists with his wife, who sports a large afro, an AK-47, and camouflage pants, as the two stand in an Oval Office adorned with a portrait of Osama bin Laden and warmed by an American flag burning in the fireplace.

The image is, of course, so absurd that one would have to be psychotic to take it seriously—and it comes with a title, “The Politics of Fear,” that indicates its true purpose for those who can’t figure it out. Even the most ardent Obama supporters recognize that The New Yorker is a liberal magazine and that the intent of the cartoon is to lampoon the right-wing fear mongers who spread so many outlandish lies about Obama. The problem, apparently, is that the image might confuse some particularly obtuse Americans into believing that Obama really is an anti-American terrorist. So The New Yorker should have known better and, presumably, used an image that could not possibly be misinterpreted by even the most ignorant or deranged person in the United States.

It is this sort of vulgar “political correctness” that all too often embarrasses those of us on the Left who actually are more intelligent than the average house plant. The would-be censors in the Obama camp aren’t doing their candidate any favors by flaunting their intellectual shallowness. They are simply making the Left look stupid—again.

{pic by Gonzalo Fernández}

Now is the time when politicians around the country undergo a startling transformation far more nightmarish than anything envisioned by Franz Kafka: election season. But, rather than turning into giant cockroaches, politicians of all ideological stripes transform during these months into creatures that are far more loathsome: candidates. The lowly cockroach is cute and cuddly in comparison.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, the respective winners of the Republican and Democratic presidential primary campaigns, are ideal illustrations of this gruesome metamorphosis. For instance, McCain opposes the torture of prisoners (presumably because he learned the hard way as a prisoner of war in Vietnam what torture is all about), but opposed a bill that would have limited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to using only those “interrogation techniques” enumerated in the Army Field Manual. He also once supported comprehensive immigration reform as an essential part of any pragmatic plan to “secure the border,” until he decided that we must secure the border before implementing the comprehensive immigration reform essential to securing the border.

Likewise, Obama at one time opposed the granting of immunity to the telecommunications companies that conspired with the lawless Bush administration to spy on Americans after 9/11—until, that is, he supported a bill that grants immunity to the telecommunications companies that conspired with the lawless Bush administration to spy on Americans after 9/11. He supports not only gun control, but also the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns (which, apparently, violates the Constitutional right to bear arms as part of “a well regulated Militia”).

These chameleon-like shifts in ideological coloring are lauded by many political professionals as evidence that a politician has mastered the art of “compromise” and is simply exhibiting “flexibility” in the give-and-take process of policymaking. Among less enlightened observers, like me, it seems to resemble lying, hypocritical, two-faced Machiavellianism. Then again, perhaps I am just overly idealistic in my belief that some principles—like, “torture is wrong”—are not negotiable. What do I really know about such matters. After all, I’m not a politician.

{pic by moonlightbulb}

The much-belated death of Republican troglodyte Jesse Helms, at the interminable age of 86, is most certainly cause for celebration. During a nearly endless career that included three decades spent proudly embarrassing the people of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate between 1972 and 2002, Helms came to embody every dark and vapid impulse that flickers through the Republican Body Politic: racism, sexism, imperialism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia. In short, Senator Helms could be counted on to provide a veneer of official, federal respectability to just about any form of ignorant intolerance one might imagine. The planet is definitely better off without him.

Unfortunately, there are still far too many Neanderthal Republicans roaming freely through the halls of Congress, commanding the votes of millions of right-wing voters who still teem and breed in every corner of the United States. Oh, well. One down…

{pic by schani}

When President Bush was recently filmed and photographed saluting U.S. troops in Bethesda, Maryland, during a groundbreaking ceremony at the National Naval Medical Center, it was not the expression of terminally unjustified smugness upon his face that was the most offensive part. It was the very fact that he was saluting the troops at all. Watching Bush salute U.S. troops is akin to watching Josef Mengele pay homage to victims of the Holocaust. It is a spectacle that goes far beyond irony, beyond mere hypocrisy, into the realm of tortured obscenity.

By the standards of justice which prevail in the military culture that Bush and other conservatives of his ilk profess to so greatly admire, our esteemed President, Vice President, and their assorted minions probably should be standing in front of a military firing squad; not telling the military at whom to fire. Starting and perpetuating a war on the basis of deliberate lies told to the U.S. Congress—not to mention the United Nations and the global public—is, for all intents and purposes, treason. Both the U.S. troops who are killed and the Iraqis whom they kill in the course of such a war are, ultimately, victims of mass murder perpetrated by the regime that set the machinery of death in motion: the Bush administration.

But, alas, justice is not blind. Rather, justice has suffered a complete psychotic breakdown; hallucinatory, delusional, and utterly disconnected from reality. And so it is that President Bush contentedly smirks at the soldiers whom he salutes with one hand, while throwing them into the Iraqi meat grinder he created with the other.

{pic by silas216}

The news that right-wing mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh has signed an eight-year syndication contract worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million is over-priced proof of the adage that it pays to be stupid. Or, more precisely, that it pays to be a demagogue in a nation teeming with under-educated conservatives. According to public opinion surveys conducted by the The Pew Research Center after the 2004 election, so-called “social conservatives”—who are grist for the Rush Limbaugh Enterprise—tend to be a poorly educated lot. Only 19 percent completed college, and a mere 9 percent had any education beyond college. By way of comparison, 23 percent of “liberals” finished college, while another 26 percent had some post-graduate education. In other words, conservatism breeds where ignorance flourishes.

Perhaps this explains why arch-conservatives like Limbaugh so despise the very concept of “public” schools. If too many people become too educated, Limbaugh & Company might run out of fellow conservatives to exploit for power and profit.